"A lot of people think I could've been the next big soul singer, and I probably could've been." Instead, he's become something else entirely.

It's no wonder that Willis Earl Beal doesn't hold critics in high regard, even when they speak favorably of his work (they usually do). Beal is a genre-defying polymath whose scope and approach can't be evoked in simple sound bites. His music doesn't fit into convenient categories like "R&B" or "pop," or even something as slippery as "post-punk" — but damned if critics don't try. His is a music that recalls everything from Angelo Badalamenti to Daniel Johnston, from Curtis Mayfield to The Residents, but none of these comparisons really holds water, and all are reductive. Willis Earl Beal, in other words, sounds exactly like Willis Earl Beal, and not much like anyone else.

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Given this, Beal naturally bristles at the common, shallow, and plain inaccurate error of identifying him as a "Chicago-based blues artist" (he doesn't even live in Chicago anymore, but that's not the biggest sticking point). "Ask anybody what kind of artist Willis Earl Beal is, and they'll say 'a blues artist,'" Beal says. "Have you ever heard blues music? I am not a blues artist. My voice kind of sounds 'soul-ish,' there are some songs that lean toward the blues, but there are a lot of influences. I am just a contemporary artist."

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Even more dubious, perhaps, is the common habit of framing Beal as an "outsider artist." This is at least somewhat of a misnomer, if not downright rude: As Beal puts it, "most of the people who get called 'outsider artists' are called that because they don't know what's going on," and this is not Beal. His cultural literacy runs deep, and he is reasonably grounded as far as artists and dreamers go. He admits that his early recordings lacked professional polish, and were done before he really had a handle on the instruments at hand. The perception of Willis as an outsider persists, though, mostly because he doesn't care to play by established industry rules, winning him a reputation for being "difficult," maybe even potentially unstable.

"People expect me to be unintelligent or 'crazy,'" Beal says. "All artists have emotional difficulties, they're sensitive... but a lot of these things are played up, and the artists themselves fall victim to it. They start to give it ammunition, and I did, too."

Indeed, the case for Beal-as-outsider-artist begins at the outset of his career. Years before becoming a professional musician, Beal was living semi-homeless in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Shy and lonely, Beal took to posting fliers around town expressing his search for companionship. On one flier, Beal drew himself in a plaid suit and bowtie and claimed, among other things, that he was "not some excessively sweet food" but "more like a biscuit," hoping this self-endorsement would resound with a "nice, pretty girl."

In a fateful twist, this admittedly eccentric approach to dating came to the attention of FOUND Magazine editor/founder Davy Rothbart (who is also an author and regular contributor to This American Life). FOUND has, since its outset, published unusual scraps discovered on the street by Rothbart, his friends, and his readers. When FOUND goes on tour sharing some of these objects, Rothbart is inevitably met with locals offering more.

Beal on the cover of FOUND Magazine.

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When Rothbart came through Albuquerque on one of these tours, a woman named Jessica Carr brought him a copy of Beal's flier. Then, as Rothbart tells us, something strange happened: "Jessica and I and about a dozen other people were all marveling at this item when, from the back of the theater, this guy stands up and says, 'Hey, that's me!'"

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"I didn't know what to do, because this had never happened in the history of FOUND," Rothbart continues. "Never, at the precise moment when someone was handing me a find, did the person who created the find happen to be there! Willis wasn't even there for the FOUND show, he was there for a late-night movie, so he was as surprised as we were."

Impressed and fascinated by Beal and his story, Rothbart put Beal's flier on the cover of FOUND #7, and published an interview that touched on Beal's homelessness and his habit of using salvaged instruments and karaoke machines in his recordings. This article, as well as subsequent early pieces, painted a picture of Beal as, well, a weirdo. Rothbart acknowledges this: "I think some of the details that I learned in that initial interview with him... People saw those details and crafted an 'outsider artist' narrative from them."

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Beal's association with FOUND, and the sometimes-eccentric response to the attention he has received since (he wears a Lone Ranger mask with the eyes blacked out anywhere he's likely to get recognized) has fueled this conception. However, it was the association with FOUND that brought Beal's work to a large audience, and eventually helped him land a record deal with Hot Charity, a division of XL Recordings (the label that broke both Adele and The xx).

Adding even more to Beal's outsider perception was his debut album Acousmatic Sorcery, a collection of the aforementioned homeless/salvaged instrument/karaoke machine recordings. Beal's no huge fan of the album, and would have just as soon left it unreleased. "I didn't have a strong perception of how I wanted to be perceived in the beginning. As a result of that, I allowed [Hot Charity] to put out Acousmatic Sorcery. Judging that is like judging a child's drawing. It was just me trying to experiment with some recordings. I had told [XL/Hot Charity] that I wanted to do some new stuff, but they were convinced that the backstory would carry it. So yeah, people misunderstood, and I've been fighting against that ever since."

Beal feels that his homelessness and eccentricity have been unduly sensationalized, and his subsequent work has shown that the rough edges of his recordings are as much about aesthetics as economy. Not recognizing the degree to which Beal has come to his lo-fi sound by choice, some collaborators have hoped to work his songs into a more conventional framework. "Certain record executives and music aficionados have told me that I have an 'unfinished' or 'underdeveloped' sound," Beal says. "'It's not right, you've got to change it.' That, to me, is a non-productive approach to any type of creative work. You're not talking about what the thing is, you're talking about what it should be. You don't know what it should be, because you're not the person who created it."

The Beal I met has little to do with any outsize characterizations in the press. He's articulate and passionate, quietly philosophical and spiritual. If he was struggling while pursuing a larger-scale music career in Chicago (and later New York City, where he was briefly based), he's feeling much more centered and content since he and his wife relocated to rural Washington state earlier this year. "My days are spent riding my bike, looking out on the water, with the cat, whatever," he says. "I'm in a much better place creatively, and the environment has definitely affected that."

Beal near his new home in Washington state.

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Another thing that has affected change in Beal's creative mood is his recent split from his record label. His new album, Experiments in Time, including the below song "Traveling Eyes," has been self-released (via CD Baby) today. It is, in many ways, a marked departure from his previous work. "It sounds more like my thoughts. I'm not screaming and shouting and stomping. There's hardly any percussion on the record. That's generally how I actually am."

This shift may be initially disappointing to those for whom Beal's "shouting and stomping" is no small part of his appeal. Critics and fans have swooned to the earth-shaking force of Beal's voice, a versatile instrument that bounces from gospel preacher to a trilling falsetto at will, even occasionally veering toward the quasi-operatic. It lends earthiness to a music that might otherwise sound alien to many ears. That powerful voice is still present on Experiments in Time, but the approach has changed. "Experiments in Time is a departure from all that blues-stompin', dick-waggin' bullshit. I did that because that's how I felt [at the time], and that's a product that's out there. It's a complete thing in and of itself, but I'm trying to at least give the impression that I'm graduating from that."

Fortunately, the impression comes across. Experiments in Time refines Beal's approach, and frames it in a slightly smoother (but no less intriguing) aural landscape than his previous albums. It's a decidedly "late-night" record: think Terry Callier, Chet Baker, or perhaps Beal favorites like Cat Power and Portishead. (Cat Power's Chan Marshall reciprocates Beal's admiration: She appears on "Coming Through," a track from his previous album Nobody Knows, and they've toured together). It's also perhaps his most cohesive and satisfying effort to date.

Still, Beal knows that Experiments in Time might confound some of his current fans. "I think I'm probably sending mixed messages, and that's probably why I'm not more famous than I am: I'm not sticking with the same shit," Beal says. "The last thing [the people at Hot Charity] told me was 'We want you to make a quintessential Willis Earl Beal record.' I told them that that's not going to happen. There's no quintessential Willis Earl Beal record."

"A lot of people think I could've been the next big soul singer, and I probably could've been. I didn't want to be. I don't want to be defined by my race, or anything like that. So now, I'm out here on the fringes."